Corsair Force Series 120GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD Review

Up on the review block is a familiar item, an update to Corsair’s Force Series SSD lineup. The Force Series 120GB is basically identical to the 100GB model, except that with the 120GB version Corsair has cut down on overprovisioning which frees up drive space without impacting drive performance resulting in a better price/GB. Read on to see how the Corsair Force 120GB SSD does compared to the original Corsair Force 100GB SSD! The results might just surprise you!

So what has changed you ask? Corsair has wisely made some changes to the Force series by cutting down on the overprovisioning. This frees an extra 20GB of usable storage over the original Force 100GB (128GB onboard NAND) and a copious 40GB on the 200GB (256GB onboard NAND) drives. They’re also offering a 60GB version now as well for those with a more limited budget. For the sake of comparison, the overprovisioning calculation simplistically starts with a baseline assumption of 128,000,000,000 bytes max available for a 128GB drive. The F100 drive allows 100GB of free space for the user with 28GB withheld. Basic math says 28/100 equals 28% overprovisioning. Applying the same formula to the 120GB version, we come up with just under 7% overprovisioning. That’s quite a difference and a welcome change as now the capacity compares to what we see on the Indilinx based drives.